Tag Archives: Team

Are you a part of a group at work, school, or recreationally? Well, then you’ve probably discriminated without even knowing it. A recent theoretical review of the literature concluded “ingroup favouritism is more potent than outgroup hostility” when it comes to discrimination in the United States. Meaning, preferential treatment to the people that are on your team contributes to discrimination more than outward displays of hostility to people not part of your team.

I should say that this ingroup favouritism doesn’t simply apply to overt teams/groups. Consider your work relationships for a moment. Let’s say that your son or daughter gets along quite well with the son or daughter of one of your subordinates. This particular subordinate missed a bunch of days of work this year because they were taking care of their child who was sick. When it comes time for performance reviews and this particular subordinate’s performance falls between two possible ratings, you give the subordinate a higher rating. However, there is another subordinate, without a child who’s friends with your child. This subordinate has also missed some work this year, but instead of giving them the higher rating, you give them the lower (of the two) ratings. By giving a higher rating to the subordinate to whom there is a connection, you’d be exhibiting ingroup favouritism. You’re not openly discriminating against the other subordinate, but you are showing preferential treatment (even if it’s inadvertently!) to one subordinate over the other.

This particular bit of research seemed especially important given Ta-Nehisi Coates’ recent essay in The Atlantic. As I grew up in a fairly multicultural environment, I like to think that I don’t let a person’s race or ethnicity factor into any decisions I make. However, I, as many others have learned from Harvard’s Project Implicit Test, the culture that I live in has had an important influence on me.

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There are obvious streams for this kind of research, but I was thinking about it in a broader context. As it stands, there’s the idea of ingroup and outgroup. That is, “our people” are over here and I’m going to do everything I can for them, while you’re people are over there and I’m not going to necessarily do everything that I can to help them. What if there no longer was an ingroup and an outgroup? Or maybe more specifically, what if everyone was part of your ingroup?

Consider someone like the Dalai Lama. There’s the ‘obvious’ ingroups for the Dalai Lama (Tibet, Buddhism, etc.), but I’d bet that the Dalai Lama probably thinks of all humans as his ingroup. Of course, we can’t all be the Dalai Lama, but we certainly could strive for this.

Let’s simplify this example just a little bit. Americans — is an ingroup — when you put it in context of a global stage. Americans look at themselves as an ingroup when it comes to some sort of international competition. That is, at the upcoming World Cup in June, Americans will be an ingroup, especially when there are matches against other countries. What if, instead of Americans thinking of themselves as the ingroup, they, instead, thought of the ingroup as fans of soccer (or football, depending upon where you’re from — although most Americans probably say soccer). While this is still an ‘ingroup,’ it’s certainly a broader and bigger ingroup than simply American (fans of soccer).

While not perfect, this is also on the way to expanding the ingroup to all of humanity.

I wanted to finish 2012 with what I think is my biggest “insight.” That is, the thing that I felt taught me the most about myself and other people. As you know, if you follow me on Twitter Follow @JStanghiniFacebook, or read what I write about here (follow button on the right-hand side!), I like to learn. I think that learning doesn’t end once you leave school (whether we like it or not) and I think that learning about ourselves never ends.

I’ve certainly came across quite a few techniques, perspectives, and ways for being in the world and handling stress. In particular, I think that Byron Katie‘s The Work can be quite powerful. While I’ve never attended one of her seminars, watching the videos of people “doing The Work” can have its own cathartic experience.

I’ve noticed that one of the revelations I’ve come to this year is very similar to what Katie has said, but I still feel it to be slightly different. It’s the idea that our expectations about the world are what cause us stress, unhappiness, and you name it. I’m speaking very abstractly, so let me give you a concrete example.

Let’s say I’m having a problem with a coworker. Let’s say that coworker does something that I don’t like. Why does this upset me? Without getting into any psychological underpinnings and staying right at the surface, it’s simply about my expectations of what that coworker should (or shouldn’t) be doing that’s causing me trouble. How? Well, assuming you believe that each human being is entitled to their own autonomy, they have free will to do as they please (within the law, I suppose). If the person is acting in a way that displeases me, it’s probably because I expect them to be acting in some other way — and they aren’t. Again, still kind of abstract, so let’s make it really concrete.

Let’s say that this coworker (by the way, this example works for family, friends, spouses, pets, pretty much anything), has a particular way of answering a question with a question. And let’s say that I find this really annoying (in fact, I’d find it intriguing, but let’s go with annoying, for now). Every time I see this coworker, I’m going to remember that this coworker asks me questions whenever I ask them questions — so it’s going to make me unhappy, just seeing this person! If I happen to need to ask them something and they ask me a question back, I might begin to feel angry. Why am I feeling angry? Simply because my expectations are that this coworker should not ask me questions when I ask them questions. Should this really matter? No! This coworker can ask me questions when I ask them questions — they’re certainly allowed to do that.

Let’s try another example for which I’m sure we can all relate: traffic. Have you ever been sitting in traffic, late for something? I know I have. While sitting in this traffic, do you ever notice that sometimes people will try to “jump the line?” Does that bother you? If I’m being honest, this has certainly bothered me at times. Why should this bother me (or you)? Well, we expect that people will be kind and wait their turn right. Weexpect… Oh boy — there it is again! Expectations! If I didn’t have expectations that people wouldn’t try to jump the line, this wouldn’t make me upset. I might think, ‘Oh, maybe they’re in a really big hurry. Maybe someone they know is in trouble and they’re trying to go save them.’ It’s really impossible to know why someone would try to jump the line in traffic, so far be it from me to expect something from them in the way that they behave to the other drivers.

So, if I had to choose one thing to offer you from 2012, moving into 2013, it would be your expectations. Notice when you get upset/angry about something and try to discern what it is that you’re expecting should be happening in that situation. If you want to take it a step beyond, try to tame that expectations. Though, for starters, I think it’s important to notice what it is that you’re expecting in a situation. From here, you’ll certainly be well on your way to determining the root of your unhappiness.

Truth be told: when I first started blogging here and I wrote down a bunch of categories that I thought I would write about, I thought I would have a harder time writing articles that weren’t about sports. Today’s post will be my 10th in the sports category, which is still 7 behind the entertainment and history categories (both have 17 each), and last among the 11 categories here at Genuine Thriving.

Six or seven years ago, I was at a sports lounge watching one of my favorite teams play. There was something different this time, though. Instead of watching my team on the “home” network where I usually watched them, I was watching them on the network of the other team. At first, this might not seem like anything special, but as I continued to watch the game on this network, I noticed something: a home-team bias. The odd thing: it wasn’t a bias for ‘my’ team.

It was a home-team bias for the “other” team. And it was pretty blatant, too. There was a controversial call (and it was really close), but the announcers were saying that it was an “easy” call in favor of their team. At first, I was a little surprised that they could be so biased. I always thought that announcers were supposed to be “unbiased” or at least not display their biases, while on-air.

A little while back, I wrote about biases. The quote to start that post was from a scientist who has won a Nobel prize for his work in this area: “You will learn from others around you being skeptical more than you will learn by becoming skeptical.”

This may take a bit of abstraction, but let’s think about how we can apply this to the scenario of watching your favorite team from the ‘other’ side. Typically, the announcers for your favorite team will develop a relationship with the players on said team. When announcing, they may display (unintentional) biases towards your team. However, if you were watching on the other team’s network, the announcers just might see things that the home-team announcers won’t (because of their biases).

I realize that it’s not always possible (or easy) to get a hold of the opposing team’s broadcast of the game. However, I would encourage you to try it once or twice. The first few times I did it, I learned some interesting things about ‘my’ team. Why? Mostly because announcers like to supply “interesting facts” about the opposing team. As a result, I learned things about ‘my’ team that I wouldn’t have ever heard had I only ever listened to the regular broadcast.

I know that for some sports, this really isn’t possible. For American football, the games are usually nationally televised on either FOX or CBS, so there isn’t a blatant bias by the announcers for one team or the other. However, for sports like hockey, baseball, and basketball, there are usually local broadcasters for the game.

One of the benefits to being a member of the YouTube community, is that you’re able to subscribe to other users. If there is a particular user that publishes videos that you’ve liked in the past, say maybe The RSA (you may have seen one of their videos — they’re the ones who write on a whiteboard depicting the ideas from the presenter’s presentation), then when you login to YouTube, if this user has published any new videos, you’ll see it right on your homepage. Additionally, you can also get notifications of new videos via email, but who likes a cluttered inbox, right?

I recently logged into YouTube to find that one of users I’ve subscribed to, TEDtalksDirector [the same user that has uploaded such popular videos as: Sir Ken Robinson – Do Schools Kill Creativity?] had uploaded a new video called: Eric Whitacre: A virtual choir of 2,000 voices strong. I like music, but I like collaboration even more, and most importantly, I was intrigued by the idea of a ‘virtual choir.’ I clicked on the video and watched the presentation by Eric Whitacre. Wow! Wow! Wow! I’ve embedded the video into this post to the right of this paragraph and strongly suggest spending the 15 minutes to watch it [Be sure to watch it in full screen mode, too!].

What struck me most about watching Eric’s presentation is the element of collaboration. In the first video [embedded in the next paragraph], Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir – ‘Lux Aurumque’, there were 185 voices in over 12 countries. In the second video [embedded at the end of this post], (which debuted quite recently, April 6th of this year to be exact), Eric Whitacre – Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir 2.0, ‘Sleep’, there were 2052 voices in over 58 countries. Can you imagine singing with over 2000 people in person much less, virtually and across the world? This project reminds me a bit of Starbucks’ Love Project, where they had people in over 156 countries join together and sing at the exact same time. Projects like these get me really excited!

Projects like these give me hope for the future of the world. It is absolutely moving that there are causes that motivate people to gather together across obscure places. The first (Lux Aurumque) of Eric’s videos was moving, but the second, was even more moving! More than two-thousand people decided that this was something that they wanted to be part of. This project was something that they wanted to contribute a piece of their creativity and flare to. This project was something that they thought was inspiring. And can you really disagree with that?

This bit of collaboration demonstrated by the people who spent hours perfecting a video to send to Eric Whitacre makes me think of the possibilities… What if we could get 10,000 people singing together? What if we could get 100,000 people singing together? What if we could get a whole country to sing together? I wonder what kind of positive emotion and inspiration we could invoke from the people of a nation, if they were all singing a song (like the ones in these videos) at the same time. I wonder what that could do for “world peace.”